Class P 

Book 





COPYRfGHT DEPOSIT 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 



FLEET STREET 
ECLOGUES 



BY 



JOHN DAVIDSON 



> > > > J , 






NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

LONDON 

JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 

1895 



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Copyright, 1895, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company. 



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John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

New Year's Day 3 

St. Valentine's Evk 19 

Good Friday 37 

St. George's Day 49 

May Day 75 

Midsummer Day 91 

St. Swithin's Day 105 

Lammas 121 

Michaelmas 159 

All Hallow's Eve 179 

Queen Elizabeth's Day 189 

Christmas Eve 209 



NEW YEAR'S DAY 



NEW YEAR'S DAY 

BASIL SANDY BRIAN 

Brian 

This trade that we ply with the pen, 
Unworthy of heroes or men, 
Assorts ever less with my humour : 
Mere tongues in the raiment of rumour. 
We review and report and invent : 
In drivel our virtue is spent. 

Basil 

From the muted tread of the feet. 
And the slackening wheels, I know 
3 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

The air is hung with snow, 
And carpeted the street. 

Brian 

Ambition, and passion, and power 
Come out of the north and the west, 
Every year, every day, every hour. 
Into Fleet Street to fashion their best : 
They would shape what is noble and wise ; 
They must live by a traffic in lies, 

Basil 

Sweet rivers of living blood 
Poured into an ocean of mud. 

Brian 

Newspapers flap o'er the land, 
And darken the face of the sky ; 

4 



NEW YEAR'S DAY 

A covey of dragons, wide-vanned, 
Circle-wise clanging, they fly. 
No nightingale sings ; overhead 
The lark never mounts to the sun ; 
Beauty and truth are dead, 
And the end of the world begun. 

Basil 

Far away in a valley of peace, 
Swaddled in emerald. 
The snow-happed primroses 
Tarry till spring has called. 

Sandy 

And here where the Fleet once tripped 
In its ditch to the drumlic Thames, 
We journalists, haughty though hipped, 
Are calling our calling names. 
5 



fleet street eclogues 

Brian 

But you know, as I know, that our craft 
Is the meanest in act and intention ; 
You know that the Time-spirit laughed 
In his sleeve at the Dutchman's invention : 
Old Coster of Haarlem, I mean, 
Whose print was the first ever seen. 

Basil 

I can hear in that valley of mine, 

Loud-voiced on a leafless spray. 

How the robin sings, flushed with his holly 

wine, 
Of the moonlight blossoms of May. 

Brian 

These dragons that hide the sun ! 
The serpents flying and fiery, 

6 



NEW YEAR'S DAY 

That knotted a nation in one 
Writhen mass : the scaly and wirey, 
And flame-breathing terror the saint 
Still slays on our coins ; the thing 
That wandering artists paint 
Where creaking sign-boards swing; 
Gargouille, famous in France, 
That the fire at Rouen slew ; 
The dragon Petrarca's lance 
In Laura's defence overthrew; 
The sea-beast Perseus killed ; 
Proserpine's triple team ; 
Tarasque whose blood was spilled 
In Rhone's empurpled stream ; 
For far-flying strength and ire 
And venom might never withstand 
The least of the flourishing quire 
In Fleet Street stalled and the Strand. 
7 



fleet street eclogues 

Basil 

Through the opening gate of the year 
Sunbeams and snowdrops peer. 

Brian 

Fed by us here and groomed 
In this pestilent reeking stye, 
These dragons I say have doomed 
ReHgion and poetry. 

Sandy 

They may doom till the moon forsakes 
Her dark, star-daisied lawn ; 
They may doom till doomsday breaks 
With angels to trumpet the dawn ; 
While love enchants the young, 
And the old have sorrow and care, 
8 



NEIV YEAR'S DAY 

No song shall be unsung, 
Unprayed no prayer. 

Brian 

Leaving the dragons alone — 
I say what the prophet says — 
The tyrant on the throne 
Is the morning and evening press. 
In all the land his spies, 
A little folk but strong, 
A second plague of flies, 
Buzz of the right and the wrong; 
Swarm in our ears and our eyes — 
News and scandal and lies. 
Men stand upon the brink 
Of a precipice every day ; 
A drop of printer's ink 
Their poise may overweigh ; 
9 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

So they think what the papers think, 

And do as the papers say. 

Who reads the daily press, 

His soul's lost here and now; 

Who writes for it is less 

Than the beast that tugs a plough. 

Basil 

Round happy household fires 
I hear sweet voices sing; 
And the lamb's-wool of our sires, 
Spiced ale, is a draught for a king. 

Sandy 

Now, journalist, perpend. 
You soil your bread and butter : 
Shall guttersnipes pretend 
To satirise the gutter? 

lO 



NEW YEAR'S DAY 

Are parsons ever seen 

To butt against the steeple? 

Brian, I fear you 've been 

With very superior people. 

We, the valour and brains of the age, 

The brilliant, adventurous souls, 

No longer in berserkir rage — 

Brian 
Spare us the berserkir rage ! 

Sandy 

Not I ; the phrase outroUs 
As freshly to me this hour, 
As when on my boyish sense 
It struck like a trumpet-blare. 
You may cringe and cower 
To critical pretence ; 
II 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

If people will go bare 

They may count on bloody backs ; 

Cold are the hearts that care 

If a girl be blue-eyed or black-eyed ; 

Only to souls of hacks 

Are phrases hackneyed. — 

When the damsel had her bower, 

And the lady kept her state, 

The splendour and the power 

That made adventure great, 

Were not more strong and splendid 

Than the subtle might we wield ; 

Though chivalry be ended, 

There are champions in the field. 

Nor are we warriors giftless ; 

Deep magic 's in our stroke ; 

Ours are the shoes of swiftness. 

And ours the darkling cloak ; 

12 



NEW YE Airs DAY 

Wc fear no golden charmer ; 
We dread no form of words ; 
We wear enchanted armour ; 
We wield enchanted swords. 
To us the hour belongs ; 
Our daily victory is 
O'er hydras, giant wrongs, 
And dwarf iniquities. 
We also may behold, 
Before our boys are old, 
When time shall have unfurled 
His heavy hanging mists. 
How the future of the world 
Was shaped by journalists. 

Basil 

Sing hey for the journalist ! 
He is your true soldado ; 
13 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Both time and chance he '11 lead a dance, 
And find out Eldorado. 

Brian 
Sing hey for Eldorado ! 

Basil 
A catch, a catch, we '11 trowl ! 

Brian 
Sing hey for Eldorado ! 

Sandy 

And bring a mazer-bowl. 
With ale a-frothing brimmed. 

Brian 

We may not rest without it 
14 



neiv year's day 

Sandy 
With dainty ribbons trimmed, 
And love-birds carved about it. 

Basil 

With roasted apples scented, 
And spiced with cloves and mace. 

Brian 
Praise him who ale invented ! 

Sandy 
In heaven he has a place ! 

Basil 
Such a camarado 
Heaven's hostel never missed ! 

Brian 
Sing hey for Eldorado ! 
IS 



fleet street eclogues 
Sandy 
Sing ho for the journaHst ! 

Basil 

We drink them and we sing them 
In mighty humming ale. 

Brian 
May fate together bring them I 

Sandy 
Amen! 

Basil 
Waas hacl ! 

Brian 

Drinc hael ! 

i6 



ST VALENTINE'S EVE 



17 



ST VALENTINE'S EVE 

MENZIES PERCY 

Percy 

A-MOPING always, journalist? For shame ! 
Though this be Lent no journalist need 
mope: 

The blazing Candlemas was foul and wet ; 

We shall be happy yet : 
Sweethearts and crocuses together ope. 

Menzies 
Assail, console me not in jest or trope : 

Give me your golden silence ; or if speech 
Must wake a ripple on the stagnant 
gloom 

19 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Of this lamp-darkened room, 
Speak blasphemy, and let the mandrake 
screech. 

Percy 

Dread words — 'tis Ercles' vein — and fit 

to teach 
The mandrake's self new ecstasies of woe, 
Have passed my lips in blame of God 

and man. 
Now surely nothing can 
Constrain my soul serene to riot so. 

Menzies 
But you are old ; the tide of life is low ; 
No wind can raise a tempest in a cup : 
Easy it is for withered nerves and veins, 
Parched hearts and barren brains 
To be serene and give life's question up. 

20 



st valentine's eve 

Percy 
Although no longer chamber-doors I dup 

For willing maids (that never conquered 
me); 
Though unimpassioned be my tranquil 

mind, 
And all my force declined, 
My quenchless soul confronts its destiny. — 
But tell me now what ghastly misery 

Peeps from the shadowy cupboard of your 
eye? 
This chastened month in white and gold 

is dressed, 
Lilies and snowdrops blessed : 
Be shriven by me as you were now to die ; 
Shrove-tide is come. 

21 



fleet street eclogues 

Menzies 

Confessions purify. 
My skeletons I will uncupboard straight : 
And if you think me pitiful and weak, 
I pray you do not speak, 
But go and leave me lonely with my fate. — 
My daily toil has irked me much of late : 

Of books that never will be read I write 
What, save the anxious authors, no one 

reads, 
And chronicle the deeds 
Of Fashion, Crime, and Council, day and 

night. 
Once in a quarter when my heart is light 

I write a poem in a weekly sheet. 

To lie in clubs on tables crowned with 
baize, 

22 



ST VALENTINE'S EVE 

Immortal for seven days : 
This is the Hfe my echoing years repeat. 

Percy 
The very round my aged steps still beat ! 

Menzies 

And brooding thus on my ephemeral 
flowers 
That smoulder in the wilderness, I 

thought, 
By envy sore distraught. 
Of amaranths that burn in lordly bowers, 
Of men divinely blessed with leisured hours. 

And all the savage in my blood was roused. 
I cursed the father who begot me poor. 
The patient womb that bore 
23 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Me, last often, ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-housed; 
I cursed the barren common where I 
browsed 



And sickened on the arid mental fare 
The state has sown broad-cast; I cursed 

the strain 
Whence sprang my blood and brain 
Frugal and dry ; I cursed myself the heir 
Of dreadful things that met me everywhere : 

Of uncouth nauseous vennels, smoky skies ; 
A chill and watery clime ; a thrifty race, 
Using all means of grace 
To save their souls and purses; lingering 

lies. 
Remnants of creeds and tags of party cries — 

24 



ST VALENTINE'S EVE 

Scarecrows and rattles ; then I cursed this 
flesh, 
Which must be daily served with meat 

and drink, 
Which will not let me think, 
But holds me prisoner in the sexual mesh ; 
I cursed all being, and began afresh — 

My education and my geniture. 

Which keep me running always from the 
goal. 

Or stranded on Time's shoal — 
In naked speech, a sixpenny reviewer, 
A hungry parasite of literature. 

Percy 

No reasoning can meet so fierce a mood. 
I '11 tell you of a journalist instead, 
These many winters dead, 
25 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Who out of evil could distil the good. 
He found his lot untamable and rude, 

And sometimes ate what beggars had dis- 
dained 
Left at the donor's door. Once on a time 
A wanton youthful rhyme 
I read him with my tears and heart's blood 

stained, 
Wherein of Fate I bitterly complained. 

He praised my rhymes ; then said, 'The 
Poet's name 
Is overhallowed ; and the Statesman's 

praise 
Unearned ; unearned the bays 
That crown the Warrior; Beauty, Art, I 

blame 
For love alone deserves the meed of fame.* 

26 



st valentine's eve 

Menzies 
I understand you not. 

Percy 

Be still and mark. 

* And so,' he said, * though I am faint and 

old. 

High in my garret cold — 

While on the pane Death's knuckles rattle 

stark, 

And hungry pangs keep sleep off — in the 

dark, 

* I think how brides and bridegrooms, many 
a pair. 
With human sanction, or all unavouched, 
Together softly couched. 
Wonder and throb in rapture ; how the care 
Of ways and means, the thought of whiten- 
ing hair, 

27 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

* Of trenchant wrinkles fade when night has 

set, 
And many a long-wed man and woman 

find 
The deepest peace of mind, 
Sweet and mysterious to each other yet. 
I think that I am still in Nature's debt, 

* Scorned, disappointed, starving, bankrupt, 

old. 

Because I loved a lady in my youth, 

And was beloved in sooth. 
I think that all the horrors ever told 
Of tonsured men and women sable-stoled, 

' Of long-drawn tortures wrought with 
subtle zest. 
Of war and massacre and martyrdom. 
Of slaves in Pagan Rome — 
28 



ST VALENTINE'S EVE 

In Christian England, who begin to test 
The purpose of their state, to strike for rest 

* And time to feel alive in : all the blight 

Of pain, age, madness, ravished inno- 
cence, 

Despair and impotence, 
The lofty anguish that affronts the light, 
And seems to fill the past with utter night, 

* Is but Love's needful shadow : thou£:h 

the poles. 
The spangled zodiac, and the stars that 

beat 
In heaven's high Watling Street 
Their myriad rounds ; though every orb 

that rolls 
Lighting or lit, were filled with tortured 
souls, 

29 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

' If one man and one woman, heart and brain 
Entranced above all fear, above all doubt, 
Might wring their essence out, 
The groaning of a universe in pain 
Were as an undersong in Love's refrain. 

' Then in a vision holy Time I see 

As one sweet bridal night. Earth softly 

spread 
One fragrant bridal bed, 
And all my unrest leaves me utterly : 
I sometimes feel almost that God may be.' 

Menzies 
You touch me not. I, stretched upon the 
rack 
Of consciousness, still curse. Woman and 

love? 
I would be throned above 
30 



ST VALENTINE'S EVE 

Humanity. Yet were I God, alack ! 
I think that I should want my manhood 
back, 

Hating and loving limits — 

Percy 

Ah ! I know 
How ill you are. You shall to-morrow do 
What I now order you. 
At early dawn through London you must go 
Until you come where long black hedge- 
rows grow, 

With pink buds pearled, with here and there 
a tree, 
And gates and stiles; and watch good 

country folk ; 
And scent the spicy smoke 
31 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Of withered weeds that burn where gardens 

be; 
And in a ditch perhaps a primrose see. 

The rooks shall stalk the plough, larks 
mount the skies, 
Blackbirds and speckled thrushes sing 

aloud, 
Hid in the warm white cloud 
Mantling the thorn, and far away shall rise 
The milky low of cows and farmyard cries. 

From windy heavens the climbing sun shall 
shine, 
And February greet you like a maid 
In russet-cloak arrayed ; 
And you shall take her for your mistress fine. 
And pluck a crocus for her valentine. 

32 



st valentine's eve 

Menzies 

In russet-cloak arrayed with homespun 

smock 
And apple cheeks. 

Percy 

I pray you do not mock. 

Menzies 

I mock not, I shall see earth and be glad : 
London 's a darksome cell where men go 
mad. 



2>3 



GOOD-FRIDAY 



35 



GOOD-FRIDAY 

BASIL SANDY BRIAN MENZIES 

Sandy 
Pfff ! journalists ; the wind blows snell ! 

Brian 
To-day we freeze, to-morrow fry. 

Basil 

And yesterday the black rain fell 
In sheets from London's smoky sky, 

Like water through a dirty sieve. 

37 



fleet street eclogues 

Mexzies 
March many weathers, as they say, 
In country nooks where proverbs Hve, 
And folk distinguish night from day. 

Sandy 
Well, we shall make a day of night: 

Behold with gules and or a fire 
Emblazoned, and a mellow light ; 

And things that journalists require. 

So let us open out our lore, 

And chat as snugly as the dead ; 

And damned be those who came before, 
And all our brilliant sayings said. 

Brian 

I love not brilliance ; give me words 
Of meadow-growth and garden plot, 
3S 



GOOD-FRIDA Y 

Of larks and blackcaps ; gaudy birds, 
Gay flowers and jewels like me not. 

Basil 

The age-end journalist it seems 

Can change his spots and turn his dress, 
For you are he whose copy teems 

With paradox and preciousness. 

Brian 
Last night I watched the evening star 

Outshine the moon it so excelled ; 
And since my thought has been afar 

With deep and simple things of eld. 

I heard in Fleet Street all the day, 

While traffic rolled and bells were rung, 

The sombre, wailing Tenebrae, 
The Sistine Miserere sung. 
39 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

I saw great people make their INIaunds ; 

The prelate leave his lofty seat; 
A kaiser break imperial bonds 

To ser\-e the poor and wash their feet. 

I saw where countless hearts besought 
Pardon, for heaven's sweet peace athirst ; 

And through my soul the tender thought 
Of Mar}% Virgin-mother pierced. 

I saw a city kneeling down, 

I saw the gonfanon unfurled, 
I saw the Pope in triple crown 

Stand up for God and bless the world. 

Templars I saw, and monks and nuns, 
I saw frail priests strong kings command ; 

I thought how great the world was once 

When Heaven and Hell were close at 

hand. 

40 



GOOD-FRIDA Y 

The gloaming came ; I ceased to ache, 
For in my veins the springtime welled, 

And soothed my fancy to forsake 
The deep and simple things of eld. 

And fly away where blackbirds sing. 
To wander free in dale and down, 

Basil 
I would that I could see the spring ! 

Sandy 
Has any one been out of town ? 

Menzies 
I have for weeks. 

Basil 

For weeks ? By heaven ! 
What deeds heroic have you wrought 
41 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

That such a foretaste should be given 
Of Paradise ? 

Menzies 
I earned it not. 

T was accident : nor did I know 

Till now, that when they come to die 
Good press-men to the country go. 

Brian 
I think it 's true. 

Sandy 

And so do I. 

Heaven is to tread unpaven ground, 
And care no more for prose or rhyme. 

Dear Menzies, talk of sight and sound, 
And make us feel the blossom-time. 
42 



good-frida y 

Menzies 

Then let my fancy dive and hale 
Pearls from my wandering memory, 

Unstrung, unsorted, else I fail 

To see the spring and make you see. 

Already round the oak at eve 

Good people prate of gain and loss ; 

With folded hands some sit and grieve — 
New mounds the green churchyard 
emboss. 

The osier-peelers — ragged bands — 
In osier-holts their business ply ; 

Like strokes of silver willow-wands 
On river banks a-bleaching lie. 

The patchwork sunshine nets the lea ; 
The flitting shadows halt and pass ; 
43 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 



Forlorn, the mossy humble-bee 
Lounges along the flowerless grass. 



With unseen smoke as pure as dew, 
Sweeter than love or lovers are, 

\Vood-\nolets of ^\•atchet hue 
Their secret hearths betray afar. 

The vanguards of the daisies come, 
Summer's crusaders sanguine-stained, 

The onlv flowers that left their home 
When happiness in Eden reigned. 

They strayed abroad, old \\Titers tell, 
Hardy and bold, east, west, south, north : 

Our guilt\* parents, when they fell. 

And flaming vengeance drove them forth, 

Their haggard eyes in \^n to God, 
To all the stars of heaven turned ; 
44 



GOOD-FRIDA V 

But when they saw where in the sod 
The golden-hearted daisies burned, 

Sweet thoughts that still within them dwelt 
Awoke, and tears embalmed their smart ; 

On Eden's daisies couched they felt 
They carried Eden in their heart. 

Basil 
Oh, little flower so sweet and dear ! 

Sandy 
Oh, humanest of flowers that grow ! 

Brian 

Oh, little brave adventurer ! 
We human beings love you so ! 
45 



fleet street eclogues 

Menzies 

We human beings love it so ! 

And when a maiden's dainty shoe 
Can cover nine, the gossips know 

The fulness of the Spring is due. 

Brian 
The gallant flower ! 

Sandy 
Its health ! Come, drink ! 

Menzies 
Its health ! By heaven, in Highland style ! 

Basil 

The daisy's health ! And now we '11 think 
Of Eden silently a while. 



46 



ST GEORGE'S DAY 



47 



ST GEORGE'S DAY 

BASIL MENZIES PERCY BRIAN HERBERT SANDY 

Herbert 

I HEAR the lark and linnet sing ; 
I hear the whitcthroat's alto ring. 

Menzies 

I hear the idle workman sigh ; 
I hear his hungry children cry. 

Sandy 

Still sad and brooding over ill ; 
Why listen to discordant tones? 
4 49 



fleet street eclogues 

Herbert 

We dream, we sing, we drive the quill 
To keep the flesh upon our bones. 
Therefore what trade have we with wrongs. 
With ways and woes that spoil our songs ? 

Menzies 

None, none ! Alas, there lies the sting ! 
We see, we feel, but cannot aid ; 
We hide our foolish heads and sing: 
We live, we die ; and all is said. 

Herbert 

To wonder-worlds of old romance 
Our aching thoughts for solace run. 

Brian 
And some have stolen fire from France. 

50 



^7^ GEORGE'S DAY 



Sandy 



And some adore the Midnight sun. 



Menzies 

I, too, for light the world explore, 

And, trembling, tread where angels trod ; 

Devout at every shrine adore, 

And follow after each new god. 

But by the altar everywhere 

I find the money-changer's stall ; 

And littering every temple-stair 

The sick and sore like maggots crawl. 

Basil 
Your talk is vain ; your voice is hoarse. 

Menzies 

I would they were as hoarse and vain 
51 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

As their wide-weltering spring and source 
Of helpless woe, of wrath insane. 

Herbert 
Why will you hug the coast of Hell ? 

Brian 
Why antedate the Judgment Day? 

Menzies 
Nay, flout me not; you know me well. 

Basil 
Right, comrade ! Give your fancy way. 

Menzies 
I cannot see the stars and flowers, 
Nor hear the lark's soprano ring, 
Because a ruddy darkness lowers 

5« 



ST GEORGE'S BAY 

For ever, and the tempests sing. 

I see the strong coerce the weak, 

And labour overwrought rebel ; 

I hear the useless treadmill creek, 

The prisoner, cursing in his cell; 

I see the loafer-burnished wall ; 

I hear the rotting match-girl whine; 

I see the unslept switchman fall ; 

I hear the explosion in the mine; 

I see along the heedless street 

The sandwichmen trudge through the mire ; 

I hear the tired quick-tripping feet 

Of sad, gay girls who ply for hire. 

Basil 

To brood on feeble woe at length 
Must drive the sanest thinker mad ; 
Consider rather weal and strength. 

53 



fleet street eclogues 

Menzies 

On what foundations do they stand ? 
I mark the sable ironclad 
In every sea; in every land, 
An army, idling on the chain 
Of rusty peace that chafes and frets 
Its seven-leagued limbs, and bristled mane 
Of glittering bayonets ; 
The glowing blast, the fire-shot smoke 
Where guns are forged and armour-plate ; 
The mammoth hammer's pounding stroke; 
The din of our dread iron date. 
And always divers undertones 
Within the roaring tempest throb — 
The chink of gold, the labourer's groans, 
The infant's wail, the woman's sob. 
Hoarsely they beg of Fate to give 

54 



ST GEORGE'S DAY 

A little lightening of their woe, 

A little time to love, to live, 

A little time to think and know. 

I see where from the slums may rise 

Some unexpected dreadful dawn — 

The gleam of steeled and scowling eyes, 

A flash of women's faces wan ! 

Basil 

This is St. George's Day. 

Menzies 
St. George ? A wretched thief, I vow. 

Herbert 

Nay, Menzies, you should rather say, 
St George for Merry England, now ! 

55 



fleet street eclogues 

Sandy 

That surely is a phantom cry, 
Hollow and vain for many years. 

Menzies 

I hear the idle workmen sigh ; 
I hear the drip of women's tears. 

Herbert 

I hear the lofty lark, 
The lowly nightingale. 

Basil 

The Present is a dungeon dark 
Of social problems. Break the gaol ! 
Get out into the splendid Past 
Or bid the splendid Future hail. 
S6 



st gicorge's day 

Menztes. 
Nor then, nor now, nor first, nor last, 
I know. The slave of ruthless Law, 
To me Time seems a dungeon vast 
Where Life lies rotting in the straw. 

Basil 
I care not for your images 
Of Life and Law. I want to sing 
Of England and of ICnglishmcn 
Who made our country what it is. 

Herbert 
And I to praise the English Spring. 

Percy 
St George for Merry England, then I 

Menztes 
There is no England now, I fear. 
57 



fleet street eclogues 

Basil 
No England, say you, and since when? 

Menzies 

Cockney and Celt and Scot are here, 
And Democrats and * ans ' and * ists ' 
In clubs and cliques and divers lists ; 
But now we have no Englishmen. 

Basil 

You utter what you never felt, 
I know. By bog and mount and fen, 
No Saxon, Norman, Scot, or Celt 
I find, but only Englishmen. 

Herbert 

In all our hedges roses bud. 
S8 



st george's bay 

Basil 

And thought and speech are more than 

blood. 

Herbert 

Away with spleen, and let us sing 
The praises of the English Spring ! 

Basil 

In weeds of gold and purple hues 
Glad April bursts with piping news 
Of swifts and swallows come again, 
And of the tender pensive strain 
The bulfinch sings from bush to bush. 

Percy. 

And oh ! the blackbird and the thrush 
Interpret as no master may 
The meaning of the night and day. 

59 



fleet street eclogues 

Sandy 

They catch the whispers of the breeze 
And weave them into melodies. 

Brian 

They utter for the hours that pass 
The purpose of their moments bright. 

Basil 

They speak the passion of the grass, 
That grows so stoutly day and night. 

Herbert 
St George for Merry England, then ! 
For we are all good Englishmen I 

Percy 

We stand as our forefathers stood 
For Liberty's and Conscience' sake. 
60 



.st george's day 

Herbert 

We are the sons of Robin Hood, 
The sons of Hereward the Wake. 

Percy 

The sons of yeomen, English-fed, 
Ready to feast or drink or fight. 

Herbert 

The sons of kings — of Hal and Ned, 
Who kept their island right and tight. 

Percy 

The sons of Cromwell's Ironsides, 
Who knew no king but God above. 

Basil 

We are the sons of English brides, 
Who married Englishmen for love. 
6i 



fleet street eclogues 

Sandy 

Oh, now I see Fate's means and ends ! 
The Bruce and Wallace wight I ken, 
Who saved old Scotland from its friends, 
Were mighty northern Englishmen. 

Brian 

And Parnell, who so greatly fought 
Against a wanton useless yoke. 
With Fate inevitably wrought 
That Irish should be English folk. 

Basil 

By bogland, highland, down, and fen. 
All Englishmen, all Englishmen ! 

Menzies 

There is no England now, I say — 

62 



st george's day 

Brian 
No England now ! My grief, my grief! 

Menzies 

We lie widespread, the dragon-prey 

Of any Cappadocian thief. 

In Arctic and Pacific seas 

We lounge and loaf; and either pole 

We reach with sprawling colonies — 

Unwieldy limbs that lack a soul. 

Basil 

St George for Greater England, then ! 

The Boreal and the Austral men ! 

They reverence the heroic roll 

Of Englishmen who sang and fought : 

They have a soul, a mighty soul, 

The soul of English speech and thought. 



fleet street eclogues 

Sandy 
And when the soul of England slept - 

Basil 
St George for foolish England, then ! 

Sandy 

Lo ! Washington and Lincoln kept 
America for Englishmen ! 

Basil 

Hurrah ! The English people reigns 
Across the wide Atlantic flood ! 
It could not bind itself in chains \ 
For Yankee blood is English blood. 

Herbert 

And here the spring is queen 
In robes of white and green. 
64 



st george's day 

Percy 

In chestnut sconces opening wide 
Tapers shall burn some fresh May morn. 

Brian 

And the elder brightens the highway side, 
And the briony binds the thorn. 

Sandy 

White is the snow of the leafless sloe, 
The saxifrage by the sedge, 
And white the lady-smocks a-row 
And sauce-alone in the hedge. 

Basil 
England is in her Spring; 
She only begins to be. 
Oh ! for an organ voice to sing 
The summer I can see ! 
S 6s 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

But the Past is there ; and a mole may know, 
And a bat may understand, 
That we are the people wherever we go — 
Kings by sea and land ! 

Herbert 

And the spring is crowned and stoled 
In purple and in gold. 

Percy 

Wherever light, wherever shade is, 
Gold and purple may be seen. 

Brian 

Gold and purple lords-and-ladies 
Tread a measure on the green. 

Herbert 
In deserts where the wild wind blows 
Blossoms the magic hsemony. 

66 



ST GEORGE^S DAY 



Percy 



Deep in the Chiltern woodland glows 
The purple pasque anemone. 

Basil 

And England still grows great 
And never shall grow old ; 
Within our hands we hold 
The world's fate. 

Menzies 

We hold the world's fate ? 
The cry seems out of date. 

Basil 

Not while a single Englishman 

Can work with English brains and bones ! 

67 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Awaiting us since time began, 

The swamps of ice, the wastes of flame ! 

In Boreal and Austral zones 

Took life and meaning when we came. 

The Sphinx that watches by the Nile 

Has seen great empires pass away : 

The mightiest lasted but a while ; 

Yet ours shall not decay. 

Because, although red blood may flow, 

And ocean shake with shot, 

Not England's sword but England's 

Word 
Undoes the Gordian Knot. 
Bold tongue, stout heart, strong hand, 

brave brow 
The world's four quarters win ; 
And patiently with axe and plough 
We bring the deserts in. 
68 



st george's day 

Menzies 
Whence comes this patriotic craze? 
Spare us at least the hackneyed brag 
About the famous English flag. 

Basil 
I '11 spare no flourish of its praise. 
Where'er our flag floats in the wind 
Order and justice dawn and shine. 
The dusky myriads of Ind, 
The swarthy tribes far south the line, 
And all who fight with lawless law, 
And all with lawless men who cope 
Look hitherward across the brine, 
For we are the world's forlorn hope. 

Menzies 
That makes my heart leap up ! Hurrah ! 
We are the world's forlorn hope ! 
69 



fleet street eclogues 

Herbert 

And with the merry birds we sing 
The praises of the English Spring. 

Percy 
Iris and orchis now unfold. 

Brian 

The drooping-leaved laburnums ope 
In thunder-showers of greenish gold. 

Menzies 
And we are the world's forlorn hope ! 

Sandy 
The lilacs shake their dancing plumes 
Of lavender, mauve, and heliotrope. 

Herbert 

The speedwell on the highway blooms. 
70 



Sr GEORGE'S DA Y 

Menzies 
And we are the world's forlorn hope ! 

Sandy 
Skeletons lurk in every street. 

Herbert 
We push and strike for air and scope. 

Brian 

The pulses of rebellion beat 

Where want and hunger sulk and mope. 

Menzies 

But though we wander far astray, 
And oft in gloomy darkness grope, 
Fearless we face the blackest day, 
For we are the world's forlorn hope. 
71 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 



Sandy 

St George for Merry England, then 1 
For we are all good Englishmen ! 



Basil 

St George for Greater England, then ! 
The Boreal and the Austral men ! 

All 

By bogland, highland, down, and fen, 
All Englishmen, all Englishmen ! 
Who with their latest breath shall sing 
Of England and the English Spring ! 



72 



MAY-DAY 



73 



MAY-DAY 

Brian Menzies 

Brian 

Late — you are late. And where have you 

been? 

Menzies 

I have been in the woods and the lanes. 

Brian 
And what have you heard and what have 

you seen, 
And what in your fancy reigns? 

Menzies 
I have heard the ring-dove coo, 

75 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

And the cuckoo toll his bell ; 

I have seen the shriekhig jay flash blue 

Athwart a wooded dell. 

I have heard the chattering streamlet run 

In haste to reach the sea ; 

1 have walchocl I ho t^oldcn bee, 

Cupid and 1 l}'uiou in one, 

Morn, noon, and afternoon, 

Fulfil the tiui^li ng hours 

With the murmuring sound of his bridal tunc 

As he married the waiting flowers. 

The long, long hedgerows white with May 

Bordered the rustling lanes; 

And a fragrant wind blew all tlic day. 

Brian 

But what in your fancy reigns? 

76 



MA Y-DA Y 



Menztes 



There rcinrncd, and is rcjrnaiit still, 
A nuMiior}'-, Vn\\\ forj^ol, 
or a lowland town, a lowland hill, 
And a lowland woman's lot. 

She shed her tears, and dreamed her dreams, 
And wore her sad wan smiles, 
Where a wide water winds and j^leams 
Among its links and isles. 

Rock-perched a royal borough towers 
High over \\\v hiidu^st trees, 
With crumhliiu; walls and faded bowers 
And moulderini'^ palaces. 

Near by a hill its dark crest lifts 
Sheer from tlu: river's bank, 

77 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

And cloudy shadow broods and shifts 
About its russet flank. 



The land is stained with purple dyes 
Of high-romantic scenes ; 
The air still quivers with the sighs 
Of tragic kings and queens ; 

The very ploughman holds his plough 
As proudly as a lance ; 
The milkmaid bears a dreamy brow, 
Inheriting romance. 

Even in my father's time a crew 
Of lads and lasses gay 
Would dip their faces in the dew 
Upon the first of May. 

78 



MA Y-DA Y 

This joyful mood might not withstand 
The age's growing care, 
When railways hacked and scored the land, 
And wires engraved the air. 

One woman only, all forlorn, 

While twenty summers flew, 

Still climbed the hill each May-day morn 

Her beauty to renew ! 

What love, what loss, what hope was hers 
No man or maid could tell. 
But all the loyal lowlanders 
Esteemed her custom well. 

Dressed in a hat with broken plume, 
A cape, and worn black frock, 
Before the dawn she left her room. 
And climbed by scar and rock. 

79 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

And SO to-day by lane and burn, 
By scented hedge and shaw, 
At many a pause and sudden turn 
Her wistful face I saw. 

And once as in a waking dream 
The whole fair lowland shone — 
The palaced rock, the hill, the stream, 
The softly coming dawn : 

And she with sobs and murmured cries 
To earth's green bosom laid 
Her withered cheek, while from her eyes 
Hot dew on cold dew strayed. 

Brl\n 
What was her end ? 

Menzies 

Oh, exquisite ! 
80 



MA Y-DA Y 

Winter and Spring she lay 
Hedriddcn in a palsy fit; 
But on the first of May, 

When the lark waked the sun, she too 
Arose, and in a trance 
Went forth to bathe her face in dew, 
The martyr of romance. 

They found her on the green hillside 
At home, and sleeping fast 
Her endless sleep, Death's pallid bride, 
Most beautiful at last. 

( .S7;/ <,'7V/;'- ivitJi'ni. ) 

' Remember us poor JMayers all, 

* And thus IV e do be (fin 
* To lead our lives in righteousness, 

' Or else we die in sin. 
6 8r 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

' I have been rambling all this night, 

* And almost all this day, 
^ And nozv returned back again 

^ I bring you a branch of May, ^ 

Brian 

An antique minstrel ! Hark ! 

Menzies 
It is Basil : I know his note. 

i^Entcr Basil, carrying a branch of haw- 
thorn blossom.) 

Menzies 

Have you been where the night-jar haunts 

the dark 
In outland ways remote? 

82 



MA Y-DA Y 



Basil 



I have been with the nightingale : 
I have learned his song so sweet: 
I sang it aloud by wootl and dale, 
And under my breath in the street. 
If the words would only flow — 

Menzies 
Oh, sing it now ! 

Basil 
No, no ! 
But it went like this, I think : — 

* Where the purple hyacinths grew, 

* And the campions white and pink, 
'The jewelled butterflies flew 

' From jewelled cups to drink ; 

83 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

* And some were violet-eyed, 

* Some blue, some rosy-red, 

' Gold-plumed, or damask-dyed, 

' Earth-born and heaven-bred ; 

' And every chalice drooped and sighed 

* When the splendid revellers fled ; 

* But never a flower its cup denied 

* Though the wine of life was shed. 



* The lark From the top of heaven raved 

* Of the sunshine sweet and old ; 

* And the whispering branches dipped and 

laved 

* In the light ; and waste and wold 

' Took heart and shone ; and the butter- 
cups paved 

* The emerald meads with gold. 

84 



MA y-DA Y 

' Now in the forest is night ; 

' The flowers have gone to sleep ; 

* But the stars have opened their eyes of 

light 

* Under the brows of heaven deep ; 

' And gentle shadows cross my sight, 
' And murmurs rustle and creep ; 
' And the very darkness is fresh and bright 
' With the tears the sweet dews weep. 

* The wind steals down the lawns 
' With a whisper of ecstasy, 

* Of moonlight nights and rosy dawns, 

* And a nest in a hawthorn tree, 

' Of the little mate for whom I wait, 

* Flying across the sea, 

* Through storm and night as sure as fate, 
' Swift-winged with love for me.' 

85 



fleet street eclogues 

Menzies 

And so you brought home the May 
With the nightingale's song in your ears. 

Basil 

And sad eyes flashed for a moment gay, 
Or welled with happy tears, 
When they saw my branch and remem- 
bered the day. 
And forgot the tedious years. 
And I thought as I tuned my rhyme, 
And waved the branch in my hand. 
Of the famous olden time 
When a Maypole stood in the Strand. 

Brian 
Let the Golden Days return ! 



MA Y-DA Y 

Menzies 
And let the May-queen reign ! 

Basil 

When smokeless fires burn, 
And London is born again ! 



87 



MIDSUMMER DAY 



89 



MIDSUMMER DAY 

BASIL SANDY HERBERT 

Sandy 

I CANNOT write, I cannot think ; 

T is half delight and half distress : 
My memory stumbles on the brink 

Of some unfathomed happiness — 

Of some old happiness divine. 

What haunting scent, what haunting note, 
What word, or what melodious line. 

Sends my heart throbbing to my throat? 
91 



fleet street eclogues 

Basil 

What? thrilled with happiness to-day, 
The longest day in all the year, 

Which we must spend in making hay 
By thrashing straw in Fleet Street here ! 

What scent? what sound? The odour stale 
Of watered streets; the bruit loud 

Of hoof and wheel on road and rail, 
The rush and trample of the crowd ! 

Herbert 
Humming the song of many a lark. 

Out of the sea, across the shires. 
The west wind blows about the park, 

And faintly stirs the Fleet Street wires. 

Perhaps it sows the happy seed 
That blossoms in your memory; 
92 



MIDSUMMER DAY 

Certain of many a western mead, 
And hill and stream it speaks to me. 

With rosy showers of apple-bloom 
The orchard sward is mantled deep ; 

Shaded in some sequestered coomb 
The red deer in the Quantocks sleep. 

Basil 
Go on : of rustic visions tell 

Till I forget the wilderness 
Of sooty brick, the dusty smell, 

The jangle of the printing-press. 

Herbert 

I hear the woodman's measured stroke ; 

I see the amber streamlet glide — 
Above, the green gold of the oak 

Fledges the gorge on either side. 
93 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

A thatched roof shines athwart the gloom 
Of the high moorland's darksome ground ; 

Far off the surging rollers boom, 

And fill the shadowy wood with sound. 

Basil 

You have pronounced the magic sign ! 

The city with its thousand years, 
Like some embodied mood of mine, 

Uncouth, prodigious, disappears. 

I stand upon a lowly bridge. 

Moss-grown beside the old Essex home ; 
Over the distant purple ridge 

The clouds arise in sultry foam ; 

In many a cluster, wreath, and chain 
A silvery vapour hangs on high, 
94 



MIDSUMMER DAY 

And snowy scarfs of silken grain 
Bedeck the blue slopes of the sky ; 

The wandering water sighs and calls, 
And breaks into a chant that rings 

Beneath the vaulted bridge, then falls 
And under heaven softly sings ; 

A light wind lingers here and there, 
And whispers in an unknown tongue 

The passionate secrets of the air, 
That never may by men be sung: 

Low, low, it whispers ; stays, and goes ; 

It comes again; again takes flight; 
And like a subtle presence grows 

And almost gathers into sight. 
95 



fleet street eclogues 

Sandy 

The wind that stirs the Fleet Street wires, 
And roams and quests about the Park, 

That wanders all across the shires, 
Humming the song of many a lark — 

The wind — it is the wind, whose breath, 
Perfumed with roses, wakes in me 

From shrouded slumbers deep as death 
A yet unfaded memory. 

Basil 

About Midsummer, every hour 

Ten thousand rosebuds opening blush ; 

The land is all one rosy bower, 
And rosy odours haunt and flush 

96 



MIDSUMMER DAY 

The winds of heaven up and down : 
On the top-gallant of the air 

The lark, the pressman in the town 
Breathe only rosy incense rare. 

Sandy 

And I, enchanted by the rose, 
Remember when I first be^an 

To know what in its bosom glows 
Exhaling scent ambrosian. 

A child, at home in streets and quays, 
The city tumult in my brain, 

I only knew of tarnished trees, 

And skies corroding vapours stain. 

One summer — Time upon my head 
Had showered the curls of years eleven 
7 97 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Me, for a month, good fortune led 

Where trees are green and hills kiss 
heaven. 

By glen and mountain, moor and lawn. 
Burn-side and sheep-path, day and night, 

I wandered, a belated faun. 

All sense, all wonder, all delight. 

And once at eve I climbed a hill, 
Burning to see the sun appear. 

And watched the jewelled darkness fill 
With lamps and clustered tapers clear. 

At last the strongest stars were spent ; 

A glimmering shadow overcame 
The swarthy-purple firmament, 

And throbbed and kindled into flame ; 
98 



MIDSUMMER DAY 

The pallid day, the trembling day- 
Put on her saffron wedding-dress, 

And watched her bridegroom far away 
Soar through the starry wilderness. 

I clasped my hands and closed my eyes, 
And tears relieved my ecstasy : 

I dared not watch the sun arise ; 
Nor knew what magic daunted me : 

And yet the roses seemed to tell 

More than the morn, had I but known 

The meaning of the fragrant smell 
That bound me with a subtle zone. 

But in the gloaming when we played 
At hide-and-seek, and I with her 

Behind a rose-bush hid, afraid 

To meet her gaze, to breathe, or stir, 

L.cfC. 99 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

The dungeon of my sense was riven, 
The beauty of the world laid bare, 

A great wind caught me up to heaven 
Upon a cloud of golden hair; 

And mouth touched mouth ; and love was 
born; 

And when our wondering vision blent. 
We found the meaning of the morn. 

The meaning of the rose's scent 

Ah me ! ah me ! since then ! since then ! 



Herbert 

Nay, nay ; let self-reproaches be ! 
Now that this thought is throned again, 
Be zealous for its sovereignty. 

lOO 



midsummer day 

Basil 
And brave, great Nature must be thanked ; 

And we must worship on our knees, 
And hold for ever sacro-sanct 

Such dewy memories as these. 



lOI 



ST SWITHIN'S DAY 



103 



ST SWITHIN'S DAY 

BASIL SANDY BRIAN MENZIES 

Basil 
We four — since Easter-timc wc have not 

met. 

Brian 

And now the Dog Days bake us in our 

rooms 
Like heretics in Dis's lidded tombs. 

Sandy 
Oh, for a little wind, a little wet ! 

Brian 

A little wet, but not from heaven, I pray ! 
Have you forgotten 't is St Swithin's Day? 

105 



fleet street eclogues 

Basil 

Cast books aside, strew paper, drop the pen ! 
Bring ice, bring lemons, bring St Julien ! 

Sandy 
Bring garlands ! 

Brian 

With the laurel, lest it fade, 
Let Bacchus twist vine-leaf and cabbage 
blade ! 

Basil 

I would I lay beside a brook at morn. 
And watched the shepherd's-clock declare 

the hours ; 
And heard the husky whisper of the corn, 
Legions of bees in leagues of summer flowers. 

io6 



st s within' s day 

Brian 
Who has been out of London? 

Basil 

Once, in June 

Upstream I went to hear the summer tune 

The birds sing at Long Ditton in a vale 

Sacred to him who wrote his own heart's 

tale. 
Of singing birds that hollow is the haunt: 
Never was such a place for singing in ! 
The valley overflows with song and chaunt, 
And brimming echoes spill the pleasant din. 
High in the oak-trees where the fresh leaves 

sprout, 
The blackbirds with their oboe voices make 
The sweetest broken music all about 
The beauty of the day for beauty's sake, 

107 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

The wanton shadow and the languid cloud, 
The grass-green velvet where the daisies 

crowd ; 
And all about the air that softly comes 
Thridding the hedgerows with its noiseless 

feet, 
The purling waves with muffled elfin drums, 
That step along their pebble-paven street ; 
And all about the mates whose love they 

won, 
And all about the sunlight and the sun. 
The thrushes into song more bravely launch 
Than thrushes do in any other dell ; 
Warblers and willow-wrens on every branch. 
Each hidden by a leaf, their rapture tell ; 
Green-finches in the elms sweet nothings 

say, 
Busy with love from dawn to dusk are they. 

io8 



ST SWITHIN'S DA V 

A passionate nightingale adown the lane 
Shakes with the force and volume of his song 
A hawthorn's heaving foliage ; such a strain, 
Self-caged like him to make his singing 

strong, 
Some poet may have made in days of yore, 
Untold, unwritten, lost for evermore. 

Sandy 

Your holiday was of a rarer mood, 
A dedication loftier than mine ; 
But yet I swear my holiday was good : 
I went to Glasgow just for auld lang syne. 
In Sauchiehall Street in the afternoon 
I saw a lady walking all in black, 
But on her head a hat shaped like the moon, 
Crescent and white and clouded with a veil. 
I could not see if she were fair or pale 

109 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Because her beauty hid her like a mist : 
But well I knew her bosom from her back ; 
And all her delicacy well I wist : 
And every boy and man that saw her pass 
Adored the beauty of that Scottish lass. 
I said within : ' Three things are worthiest 

knowing, 
And when I know them nothing else I know. 
I know unboundedly , what needs no showing, 
That women are most beautiful ; and then 
I know I love them ; and I know again 
Herein alone true Science lies, for, lo ! 
Old Rome 's a ruin ; Caesar is a name ; 
The Church? — alas ! a lifeboat, warped and 

sunk ; 
God, a disputed title : but the fame 
Of those who sang of love, fresher than 



sprmp" 



no 



ST S WITHIN' S DA Y 

Blossoms for ever with the tree of hfe, 
Whose boughs are generations ; and its trunk 
Love ; and its flowers, lovers. 

Brian 

Love we sing, 
Towards Love we strive ; no other song or 

strife 
We know, or heed. — You, Menzies, what 

say you ? 
Dark, in your corner — with a volume too ! 

Menzies 

Now that I hang above the loathsome hell 
Of smouldering spite and foul disparage- 
ment, 
Even as a Christian, singed and basted well 
By Christians, hung in dreadful discontent 

III 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Chained to a beam, and dangling in the fire ; 
And Hke an ocean-searching sailor-wight 
Whose lonely eyes and clinging fingers tire ; 
And like a desperate, pallid acolyte 
Of giddy Fortune, who with straining clutch 
Swings in her wheel's wind from its lower 

rim, 
Doubting of all things, disbelieving much, 
I come to him who sang the heavenly hymn. 

Brian 
To Colin Clout ! But whence this desperate 
thought? 

Menzies 
Two months ago I published — 

Brian 

(Out! Alack!) 

112 



st swithin's da y 

Menzies 

A book that held the essence of my Hfe ; 
Wrong praise and wrong abuse was all I got. 

Basil 
We all have suffered from the critic's knife. 

Sandy 
And helpless lain on many a weekly rack. 

Menzies 
But I am weak. 

Basil 
No, Menzies ; you are strong. 
Already you have cast aside the wrong, 
And solace found in Spenser's noble song. 
When I was in like case it took a year 
Before my wounds were whole, my vision 
clear. 
8 113 



fleet street eclogues 

Menzies 
What brought you to yourself? 



Basil 



Menzies 



Brian 



I prayed. 



Indeed ! 



To whom? 



Basil 

I know not ; 't is the mood I need — 
Submissive aspiration. 

Menzies 

Pray with us : 
Here from the city's centre make appeal. 

114 



ST SWITHIN'S DA Y 



Brian 



Where hawkers cry, where roar the cab and 
'bus. 

Basil 

So be it. On your knees, then: Sandy, 
kneel, — 

Sweet powers of righteousness protect us 

now ! 
Your adversary. Fate, has driven us down 
From that green-crowned, sun-fronting 

mountain-brow. 
Where peace and aspiration (ebb and flow 
Of thought that strives to whelm the infinite ; 
And, as the sun for ever fails to drown 
More than a little hollow of the night, 
Pierces a rush-light's ray's length into it) 

115 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Swung our ecstatic spirits to and fro 
Between the Heaven and Hades of delight, 
Down to that Bedlam of the universe, 
That sepulchre of souls for ever yawning, 
That jug of asps — God's enemy. Time's 

hearse. 
The world, that blister raised by every 

dawning. 
Help, ere it drive us mad, this devil's din ! 
The clash of iron, and the clink of gold ; 
The quack's, the beggar's whining manifold ; 
The harlot's whisper, tempting men to sin ; 
The voice of priests who damn each other's 

missions ; 
The babel-tongues of foolish politicians, 
Who shout around a swaying Government ; 
The groans of beasts of burden, mostly men. 
Who toil to please a thankless upper ten ; 

ii6 



ST S WITHIN' S DAY 

The knowledge-monger's cry, * A brand-new 

fact ! ' 
The dog's hushed howl from whom the fact 

was rent ; 
The still-voice ' Culture ; ' and the slogan 

'Act!' 
Save us from madness ; keep us night and 

day, 
Sweet powers of righteousness to whom we 

pray. 



"7 



LAMMAS 



119 



LAMMAS 

HERBERT PERCY SANDY NINIAN 

t 

Percy 

A HEALTH, in cider, golden, racy, rough — 
The harvest and the harvesters ! 

Sandy 

I drink 
In amber spirit that enshrines the heart 
Of an old Lothian summer. 

Percy ' 

Summers old 
And Gules of August ! — to their memory 
I drink, and to the memory of those 

121 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

"Who wielded shining sickles. Forth they 

went, 
The gaunt and ragged heralds of the morn : 
Before them spread the sighing leagues of 

grain ; 
Behind, the tardy sun arose and struck 
All day on men and women obstinate 
Against the stubborn ranks, the golden 

horde : 
Silent and set, as their long-sworded sires 
Who fought the crashing rollers on the 

strand 
And stared athwart the ocean wistfully 
Into the moaning storm, the reapers reaped : 
And they grew lean ; and the sun burnt 

them black : 
A sea of living gold poured round their feet 
And rose in crested shocks ; still and anon 

122 



LAAfMAS 

The whetstone shrieked against the curving 

blade. 
I drink the swarthy harvesters of old ! 

Herbert 
To them all honour ! But I also drink 
The merry singing wheels that lighten toil. 

Sandy 
And drive men into cities where they rot ! 
Nor do they lighten toil — 

NiNIAN 

A truce to this ! 
Let us see things and say them. Why 
debate ? 

Sandy 

Debate ? The sergeant-major of the tongue 1 
Rather we should invite his discipline. 

123 



fleet street eclogues 

Percy 
Well said, indeed ! It is this same Debate 
That overmasters armies ; that distils 
From rancorous commotion amity; 
It is the proof, sifter and alkahest 
Of all opinion, and the ordeal keen 
Of knowledge, reason and inteUigence ; 
The arbiter of right ; the only source, 
Camp, castle and estate of liberty. 
The sword did never yet perpetuate 
The work it reared — too sharp a trowel, still 
With bloody mortar building on the sand. 
The word alone endures ; but prophecy 
Being now invalid, we exalt Debate. 

Sandy 
The blare of personal and party aims 
In parliaments and journals seems indeed 

124 



LAMMAS 

No substitute for Sinai ; but it serves : 
And from the vehement logomachy 
Of interest and cabal, something humane 
At happy intervals proceeds. 

NiNIAN 

How now ! 
* Something humane at happy intervals ! ' 
A meagre output for your demiurge ! 

Percy 
Debate, like every energy divine, 
Careless of centuries, elaborates 
Events effectual for eternity. 
The cavillers, impatient of delay. 
Like little boys that violate the earth 
To see if seedlings sprout, resent the mode, 
When they descry the immaterial 
Advancement in a decade ; but we know, 

"5 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

We, ponderers devout of secular years, 
How this most tedious Cyclops, this De- 
bate, 
Laborious long in darkness and distress. 
Hammered and forged the adamantine 

chains 
That shackle tyranny, and now begins 
To smelt the ore from which shall yet be 

wrought 
A kingly crown for every child of man. 

NiNIAN 

I see no hope in wrangling. Nations pass 
From panic into panic ; all men seem 
Fools or fanatics. 

Percy 

Well? . . . Proceed; discuss. 
126 



LAMMAS 

NiNIAN 
Not I ; for now you put me on my guard. 
Sometimes when I forget myself I talk 
As though I were persuaded of the truth 
Of some received or unreceived belief; 
But always afterwards I am ashamed 
Of such lewd lapses into bigotry. 

Percy 
Intolerantly tolerant, I say ! 

Sandy 
This is debauchery : defend yourself! 

NiNIAN 
I cannot ; I have tried it many a time, 
And always failed, because the thing I say 
Seems not more just than that which I 
deny ; 

127 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Nor would I if I could, because to me 
It now appears inept to take a side. 
I know that silence would become me best, 
And I endeavour to be quiet. 

Sandy 

Oh! 

NiNIAN 

Indeed I do. . . . Now I shall say no more. 

Herbert 
Why do you take offence so readily? 

NiNIAN 

I am not well : I am haunted. Lo, I stand 

On Arthur's Seat. The chill and brindled 

fog 

That plumed the Bass and belted Berwick 

Law, 

12S 



LAMMAS 

That hung with ghostly tapestry the stones 
Of bleak Tantallon, from the windy Forth, 
Noiseless and dim, speeds by the pier of 

Leith, 
And by Leith Walk, its dreary channel old, 
To flood the famous city, Edinburgh. 
Then, like the spectre of an inland sea 
By wanton sorcerers troubled and de- 
stroyed, 
It foams with whitening surges through 

the vale, 
The fair green hollow over Salisbury Crags ; 
And rises clasping every gentle slope. 
Uneven scar, and fairy-girdled knoll. 
Till with the hungry passion of the dead 
It hugs the high earth, frantic to supply 
Its own lean misty ribs, and live again 
Terrestrial, with the mountain for a soul. 
9 129 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

I stand and watch. The fog begins to ebb ; 
And sunset weaves of all the waning wreaths 
A veil of lace, investing goldenly 
The rock-piled castle — plinth and monolith 
Of ruby deep and dark in soaring groups ; 
The Monument aflame with chrysolite ; 
St Giles's garland-crown studded with gems. 
A bell rings faintly: curled and braided 

smoke 
O'erhangs the humming Canongate, and 

flings 
Dusky festoons that wither as they fall 
About the wasted towers of Holyrood. 
In front the burnished disc of day descends 
The ample crimson west ; behind, the night 
In silent legions troops into the air. — 
Masses of vision overwhelm me thus: 
I am haunted by the heavens and the earth — 

130 



LAMMAS 

Darkness and light; and when I am 

addressed 
I answer from the point, or petulantly, 
Or say the opposite of what I would, 
And am most awkward, helpless, and 

forlorn. 
Wherefore I shun the company of men, 
Not fearing them, but fearful of myself; 
Surely to strive to please and still to fail 
Is to be wretched in the last degree. 

Sandy 
Then do not strive to please: contemn 

contempt. 
And trust yourself. 

NiNIAN 

But I mistrust myself: 

A word, a glance, a cloud, a beam of light, 
A perfume from its orbit shakes my soul. 

131 



fleet street eclogues 

Sandy 
This weakness comes because you look 
without. 

NiNIAN 

I look without: you look within: what 

then? 
You are possessed ; I, obsessed : that is all. 
I am besieged by things that I have seen : 
Followed and watched by rivers ; snared and 

held 
In labyrinthine woods and tangled meads ; 
Hemmed in by mountains ; waylaid by the 

sun; 

Environed and beset by moon and stars ; 

Whispered by winds and summoned by the 

sea. 

Herbert 

What do you note now? 

132 



LAMMAS 

NiNIAN 

By a Kentish road, 
Across the down where poles in ricks 

repose, 
DeHvered from the burden of the bines, 
And golden apples on their twisted boughs 
Illumine ancient orchards, I descend, 
Watching and wondering to the Medway's 

bank. 
The alder and the hazel dip their leaves ; 
The grass-green willow shakes ; the spiny 

thorn. 
Embossed and lustrous with its load of 

haws. 
Shines in the water like a burning bush ; 
And broad and deep, muttering outlandish 

things, 
The heavy river rolls its umber flood. 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Convolvuluses overhang the brink, 
Pallid or watchet-hued, and still as bells 
That in a trance imagine tuneful chimes 
Of virtue to enchant a moonlit mere. 
On river lawns with emerald velvet spread 
The ewes sedately browse the three-piled 

nap. 
A distant clang of shouts and laughter rings 
Across the valley from the gleaming tents 
Of sunburnt hoppers at their evening meal ; 
And fainter voices from the roadside inn 
Echo about the air, and dwell and die. 
Crowned by the yellow oasthouse from 

whose cowl 
Banners and scarfs of fleecy smoke hang 

out, 
And busked with serried, tawny-clustered 

vines, 

134 



LAMMAS 

Far-reaching slopes lean up along the sky. 
The drowsy wind touches a fitful stop ; 
The Medway mutters dreaming as it rolls ; 
In bronzing brakes and thickets deeply 

choired 
Autumnal tokens birds at leisure pipe ; 
While the sun, shut within a donjon high 
Of massive cloud, through secret loopholes 

flings 
His moted beams that quiver visibly 
Broadcast; or seem ethereal lances, stacked 
By the celestial watchmen who patrol 
The world at night, and on their silent 

rounds 
Move to the ghostly music of the spheres. 

Herbert 
And whence comes this obsession? 

135 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

NiNIAN 

Hark ! Behold ! 
The floor is flooded with the tide. I lounge 
Upon a shingle bolster. Dimly seen 
Beyond the weathcrgleam a pennon'd mast, 
A drift of smoke, hover and disappear ; 
And in the midst dark sails of mackerel 

boats 
Over a reach of water, brown as tan, 
Dance, deftly tripping the uneven waves. 
Nearer, a yellow width unwinds ; between, 
A point of emerald glows, and suddenly 
Shoots out and burns its way towards the 

west — 
A spark in tinder, then a stripe of fire, 
And last a sheet of phosphorescent green 
Fuming with white waves. Listen ! at my 

feet 

136 



LAMMAS 

The uplifted shuddering rollers headlong 

fall, 
And jangle on the beach as the surf breaks 
In silver chains and shekels; while the wind 
Out of the southwest sings across the deep. 
Straightway a new sky makes another sea. 
Occultly gifted, light upon the waves 
Juggles with hidden beams behind a cloud 
Bright but impenetrable. Near the shore 
A vein of saffron shines ; beyond, a band 
Of olive hue blends with a sapphire zone; 
Further away, wine-coloured water heaves 
Against a high sea-wall of swarthy fog. 
Is it the sea that gleams in merging breadths 
Of colour dark and wet? Or do the powers, 
That decorate the quarters of the world, 
In some vast crucible dissolve and fuse 
Virginal mines of ruby, malachite, 

137 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Jacinth and chrysoprase to pave the floor 
Of ocean rough with wrecks and skeletons? 
Nature is now about some mystery ! 
But while I watch, ere I can mark the 

change, 
The passionate sun flames through the 

shrivelled cloud. 
And all the crisp and curling water wakes. 
Blue as the naked sky that bathes in it. 

Herbert 
How does it happen you are so beset? 

NiNIAN 

I shall attempt to tell you honestly. 
It was engraven deeply on my mind 
In daily lessons from my infancy 
Until I left my father's house, that not 
Ability and knowledge,beauty and strength, 

138 



LAMMAS 

But goodness only can avail. I watched, 
And thought I understood that beauty, 

strength 
And knowledge ought to reign, they being 

indeed 
The trinity of goodness ; but I claimed 
That this should be revealed to me, that I 
Should be directly warned by God Himself 
In the old fashion. Strange it seems ; and 

yet 
It was not very strange. Each morn and eve, 
Year after year, I heard the prophets read, 
Heard strong believing prayer : the atmos- 
phere 
Was not allied more nearly to my breath 
Than to my mind the thought of God — 

no dream 
Of deity ; a living, active God. 

139 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

On hill-tops, by the sea, in storm, in calm 
I cried to Him to speak to me ; with tears 
Solicited a sign. Sleepless and pale 
I wandered like a ghost, and day and night 
Waited upon a message from on high. 
Sunset and sunrise came ; the seasons past ; 
The years went slowly by ; but still to me 
The universe was dumb. Books helped me 

not. 
Except for pleasure or to gain command 
Of words : I would have God's own voice or 

none. 
At last I ceased to hope and found content 
In roaming through the land. The magic 

sun 
Drew pictures on my sight. Wondering I 

watched ; 
Nor could the secular fairy ever change 

140 



LAMMAS 

My wonder into curiosity. 
All my emotion and imagining ' 

Were of the finest tissue that is woven 
From sense and thought. No well-thumbed 

page appeared 
In the hard book of memory when I woke : 
Amazed I trembled newly into life : 
I seemed to be created every morn. 
A golden trumpet pealed along the sky: 
The sun arose ; the whole earth rushed upon 

me. 
Sometimes the tree that stroked my window- 
pane 
Was more than I could grasp ; sometimes 

my thought 
Absorbed the universe, which fell away 
And dwindled from my ken, as if my mind 
Had been the roomy continent of space. — 

141 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

My way of life led me to London town, 
And difficulties — which I overcame, 
Equipped with patience and necessity. 
Then suddenly before my thoughts might 

leap 
Resurgent from the living tomb of care 
And dip their wings in dawn, about me 

clung 
The slimy folds of sin : its nether coils 
Are hidden in the sepulchre of time. 
The glutted past ; the pallid future strains 
In travail with its fiery eyes and fangs : 
I peer from out the slippery middle wreaths 
And see blurred visions of the world, or 

watch 
The flashing scenes that haunt my memory. 
When heedfuUy I viewed my latter days — 
Considering for the first time in my Hfe 

142 



LAMMAS 

The naked facts of my affairs and me — 
I found that underneath indifference 
To every aim saving a Hvehhood 
And leisure to enjoy nature and art, 
My source of strength, though never to 

myself 
Confessed before, had been the lurking 

thought 
That poison, or a bullet, or the waves 
Could stop the unendurable ecstasy 
Of pain or pleasure, at whichever pole 
Of passion I determined to forsake 
The orb of life, on my acceptance thrust 
In ignorance and disregard of me, 
My temperament and fitness for the gift ; " 
But now that refuge of despair is shut, 
For other lives have twined themselves 

with mine. 

143 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

And yet . . . How shall I seize you with 

due dread 
Of the offensive tide that stifles me, 
The worm obscene in whose close coils I 

writhe? . . . 
Now I conceive it clearly ; you shall mark 
Fate's way with me ! A tedious decade 

hence 
My son shall come and pitifully cry, 

* Father, why am I weak, outclassed, out- 

cast? 

* I cannot do the things that others do ; 

' I take no place in work or play ; my brains 

* Are unelastic : something in my head 

* Snaps when I fain would study ; visions 

rise 

* Unsummoned ; phantom tongues mum- 

ble strange news ; 
144 



LAMMAS 

* And when I would contend in games, my 

bones 

* Grow pithless, and my sinews shrink ; my 

heart ! — 

* Who wore it out with sensual drudgery 

* Before it came to me ? what warped its 

valves ? 

* It has been used : my heart is secondhand ! 

* Why had I not the force to be born great, 

* Fit for a splendid stage, a noble part, 

* A crisis in the world ? Why must I 

think 
'Such things at seventeen? Why think 

at all 
*When love should lap me in a constant 

dream? 

* I have no faith instinctive in myself; 
'No reservoir profound of energy; 

145 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

* No fathomless resource ; no central fire ; 

* No passionate aroma in my blood 

' Filling the world with fragrance where I 
come; 

* No rapt imagination to transmute 

' All pallor into glory. Life you gave : 
' Where is my birthright, sir, beauty and 

strength?' 
What can I say to him? 

Herbert Percy Sandy 

The truth ! 

NiNIAN 

This then : — 

* My son, your ancestors supplanted you : 

* You are my child ; hence are your teeth 

on edge. 

* Our blood is stale ; the tree from which 

we spring 

146 



LAMMAS 

' Fades at the top. Two of our family 
' Have died insane in my time : one I saw 
' Go mad. The sounds and sights that 
visit you 

* Attend me too, foretellers of our doom. 

* The ultimate iniquity is mine ; 

* But from a root in distant ages sunk 

' The loathsome filaments entangle you. 
' And I impeach the smooth conniving 

world, 
' The bland accomplice that has made and 

makes 

* A merit of defect, a cult of woe, 

' Sowing exhausted land with seed that 's 
foul, 

* To harvest tares of madness, impotence, 
' Uncomeliness in wasteful granaries — 

* I mean asylums, prisons, hospitals. 

147 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

* If only nineteen hundred years ago 

* A gospel of the pride of life had rung 

* Our doleful era in ; if the device 

* In nature's choice of beauty and of 

strength 

* Had then been shown to man, how had 

the world 

* Approved the excellent expedient, 

* With voluntary euthanasia 

* Weeded humanity at once, and made 

* A race of heroes in a golden age ! . . . 
'This helps not. All the blame is mine, 

my son, 

* Who never should have been ' ... It 

palsies me ; 
I cannot comfort him; he stands and 

stares 
Defeated ere he was begot. — Behold 

148 



LAMMAS 

The ancient snake that pinions me ! Like 

one 
Chained to a column in a turbid stream, 
About my ears a sluggish billow flaps, 
And chokes and daubs me with its ropy 

wash. 

Sandy 

Escape ! I know the manner ! Live at 

speed ; 
And call your least caprice the law of 

God; 
Disdain the shows of things, and every love 
Whose stamen is not hate; self-centred 

stand ; 
Accept no second thought ; in every throb 
Your heart gives, every murmur of your 

mind, 

149 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Listen devoutly to the trump of doom. 
You arc )'our birthright ; lot it serve you 

well : 
Be }'our own star, for strength is from 

within, 
And one against the world will alwa}'s win ! 

NiNTAN 

I cannot act. The subtle coils grow tense, 
And crush my limbs, my heart, my tliroat, 

\\\\ head. 
I am the sulTerer, the endurer, I. 
Yet God, who gives no presage hitherto, 
llaply intends hereafter to be heard. 
1 am not thinking solely of m}'self, 
But of the groaning cataract of life, 
The ruddy stream that leaps importunate 
Out of the night, and in a moment vaults 

ISO 



LAMMAS 

The immediate treacherous precipice of 

time, 
Splashint; the stars, downward into the 

night. 
Meanwhile for me no hilHng opiate, 
No dream, no mystic solvent : I must watch 

Hopeless, unhclped, till I go mad or die. 

Herbert 
But you have hope and help. 

NiNIAN 

I ? Show me them ! 

Herbert 

You went forth seeking' God and found the 

world. 
The sounds and sights that haunt, and help 

and please. 

151 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

The canopy and state of day and night : 
The pageant of the year; the changing 

moods, 
The loyal constancy and testament 
Of Nature — her asides, her hints, and 

smiles, 
Her clear ideas of repose and toil, 
Her covenant and noble ministry 
Of light and darkness, and of life and death. 
Are the true salve for your distempered 

mind. 
Blame not yourself too much; admit no 

fear 
Of madness with the sunrise in your blood ; 
And hold your own intelligence in awe 
As the most high : there is no other 

God — 
No God at all ; yet God is in the womb — 

152 



LAMMAS 

A living God, no mystic deity. 
With idols in its infancy the world 
Deceived itself as maidens do with dolls, 
And as it grew pretended and believed 
That what it should bring forth already 

reigned. 
Now is its hour come, but it only knows 
The sick dismay and anguish, ignorant 
Of birth-pangs and an offspring more divine 
Than man has yet imagined. I have woes. 
As you and all men have in their degree ; 
So let us think we are the tortured nerves 
Of Being in travail with a higher type. 
I know that I shall crumble back to dust, 
And cease for evermore from sense and 

thought. 
But this contents me well in my distress : — 
I, being human, touch the highest reach 

153 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Attained by matter, and within me feel 

The motion of a loftier than I : 

Out of the beast came man; from man 

comes God. 
Deepest delight is in the certainty 
That to the all pervading element 
Wherein the universe disports a while, 
Ethereal oblivion, my deeds 
And I eternally belong. 

NiNIAN 

Yes. . . . See, 
They throng the room ! — no spectres, but 

themselves : 
Sibilant depths of darkness ; avenues 
Of latticed light; ambrosial, pine-strewn 

glades ; 
Ravines and waterfalls ; the grass-green turf. 
Where primroses by secret alchemy 

154 



LAMMAS 

Distil from buried treasure golden leaves, 
And where forget-me-nots above the tombs 
Of snow-drops hang their candelabra, 

trimmed 
With azure light — turquoise by magic roots 
Drawn from the bowels of the earth and 

changed 
To living flame ; roses, laburnum, lilac ; 
Sunrise and sunset like a glowing vice 
Blood-stained that grips the world; the 

restless moon 
Swung low to light us ; clouds ; the limpid 

sky; 
The bourdon of the great ground-bee, 

athwart 
A lonely hill-side, vibrant on the air, 
And subtler than the scent of violets ; 
Sonorous winds, storm, thunder, and the sea. 

155 



MICHAELMAS 



157 



MICHAELMAS 

BASIL HERBERT BRIAN SANDY RIENZIES 

Herbert 
The farmer roasts his stubble goose. 

' Menzies 

The pard and tiger moths are loose. 

Sandy 

The broom-pods crackle in the sun ; 
And since the flowers are nearly done, 
From thymy slopes and heather hills, 
The wearied bee his pocket fills. 
159 



fleet street eclogues 

Brian 
The wearied bee ! 

Herbert 

On ancient walls 
The moss turns greener. 

Sandy 

Hark ! St Paul's 
Booms midnight. 

Brian 
Basil is asleep. 

Sandy 
Boom, iron tongue ! boom, slow and deep ! 

Menzies 

The berries on the hawthorn tree 
Are red as blood. 

1 60 



michaelmas 

Brian 
The wearied bee ! 

Herbert 
In Devon cider-presses flow, 
And lads and lasses nutting go. 

Basil 
Twelve notes the bell-voiced midnight 

pealed ; 
The moon stood still ; the wan stars reeled. 

Brian 
Lord ! Basil, are you off your head ? 

Basil 

The opening knell had awakened me ; 
The twelve rang out a lullaby. 

Brian 
What passion's this? whose mare is dead? 
II i6i 



fleet street eclogues 

Sandy 

Fie, Brian ! Let him say his say, 
Begin again and fire away. 

Basil 

I started from uneasy slumber, 

And heard night's stately tongue o'er- 

number 
Twelve measured beats. While rang the last 
I slept again ; but ere it passed 
In still-attenuating sound 
I wakened from that sudden swound. 
A dream begotten by the bell 
Was born within its lingering knell. 
The deep reverberation clung 
About my spirit ; anguish wrung 
My flesh ; the mortal veil was rent ; 
And from the world's imprisonment, 

162 



MICHAELMAS 

And out of penitential Time 
I soared into a ransomed clime. 
The air was balmier than the west 
That bends the barley's nodding crest, 
When happy folk the greenwood seek, 
And summer roasts the apple's cheek. 
A darkness of another dye 
Than earthly night o'erspread the sky 
If any heaven were heaved on high : 
The only light that guided me 
My soul's enkindled radiancy. 
The splendour that my spirit threw 
Revealed new green, new golden dew, 
Wherein I saw new flowers encamp : 
They glimmered in my silvery lamp 
Like gems in an illumined grot: 
I glided on ; my light waned not ; 
Fresh wonders peered forth as I passed ; 
163 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Without me brooded darkness vast. 
Among the branches of the trees 
That trembled to the fingering breeze, 
And far more softly sang and sighed 
Than soft ^olian harps, I spied 
Looks brighter than the liquid gold 
That streams before the peal has rolled. 
Notes sweeter than the nightingale's, 
More piercing than the lowly rail's, 
And wealthier than the gorgeous chime 
The mocking-bird at coupling time 
Re-rings again and o'er and o'er 
In changes richer than before, 
With ruffling throat and spiral motion — 
The vortex of a whirling ocean. 
Whose floods are seething music waves 
Outwelling from his heart's glad caves — 
Surged and re-surged about my sense, 
164 



MICHAELMAS 

That revelled in their vehemence. 

A blackness then waylaid my soul, 

Intense, unfrayed, a perfect whole : 

My beams could not irradiate 

This ebon front, this cloudy gate. 

Far up I saw a shimmer dim, 

Like that above a night-cloud's rim, 

Left trailing by the long-sunk sun. 

When half the summer-time is done : 

It coped the high-reared dense black blind : 

I wondered what might be behind ; 

But when I pressed no step might be. 

And yet between the wall and me 

The strange sward flower-strewn I could see. 

Soon sang a voice ; and, strange to tell, 
It was my own voice singing well 
A new song that I cannot mind ; 

i6s 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Vanished at once the dense black blind ; 
Far, wide, a rainbow heaven of light 
Clouded a while my silly sight. 

I saw a sky of purple gloom. 
That glowed as from a Tyrian loom, 
And blushing hills perfumed with heath, 
And flower-decked valleys hung beneath. 
Where water purled a signal noise. 
Melodious, like an angel's voice. 
And there were forests great and old, 
The carpet of whose fertile mould 
Was woven of ferns and lustrous flowers ; 
And caves were there and pleasant bowers : 
And rocks, immortally undressed. 
That shone through many a loose green vest. 
And in the sky, and on the hills. 
And through the woods, and by the rills, 

i66 



MICHAELMAS 

A host of lights of every hue 

And every shape Ht up the view. 

Some shone with blood-streaked glow of 

green 
Like jasper ; the carnation sheen 
Of sardonyx beamed bright and pale ; 
And like a maiden's finger-nail 
The hue of chalcedony gleamed ; 
And some pale blue like jacinth seemed ; 
And there were flames like chrysolites, 
And rubies — gems that love delights 
Beside the well-loved lips to shame ; 
And there was many an emerald flame ; 
And topazes and sapphires came, 
And smouldering amethystine hues, 
Like purple grapes where hghts infuse 
A glow of garden violets. 
Or women's eyes love's sweet dew wets, 

167 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

The flaming shapes for ever changed 
As fixed they hung or widely ranged. 
Like meteors some wide heaven spanned ; 
Like wisps some shot about the land ; 
And others moved their scrolls and curls, 
Like waving skirts where lovely girls 
Evolve firom mazy minstrelsy 
A moving silk-draped melody, 
Dancing at the bridal-feast 
Of some grand monarch of the east. 
Transcending in magnificence, 
In beauty, and in eloquence 
Of movement, and in variance 
Of shapely forms, and in the dance 
The loftiest height with poise of state 
Maintaining easily, elate 
Above the others sailing far. 
Now beaming like an opal star, 

1 68 



MICHAELMAS 

Now like the rainbow's shifting bridge 
Wheeling from mountain ridge to ridge, 
And now expanding like the dawn, 
Now like the northern lights, there shone 
A glorious flame ; and one bright form, 
As grand in motion as a storm. 
Exceeded symmetry. I knew 
What these two were ; but memory grew 
A jumbled chaos when I hoped 
To seize their names. While yet I groped 
Within the darkened lumber-room 
Of memory, a sound did loom 
Upon my hearing, which till then 
Had been a hollow empty den, 
Its sense being stolen into my sight 
To give it power to grasp the light. 
Eftsoons the looming sound, evolved 
Whence I perceived not then, resolved 

169 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Its misty volume into dew, 
That rose and fell and rose anew, 
And showering gently seemed to bear 
Odours from Cytherea's hair. 
Or from the thousand flowers that please 
The vigilant Hesperides 
Within their bower on Atlas' top, 
Whose shoulders huge the heavens prop. 
So dulcet was the harmony. 
It rained into my memory, 
And, freshening that fallow mead, 
Awakened many a sleeping seed 
That sprang and blossomed into flower, 
A bell for every happy hour. 
But yet my wakening intuition 
That longed to execute its mission, 
To call those two supremest flames, 
Bloomed not in flower of their names. 

170 



MICHAELMAS 

Oh me ! that airy melody ! 
Its memory distresses me, 
Like old men's thoughts of love's first kiss, 
Like damned imaginings of bliss. 
No thrilling movement with me stays ; 
The shadow of one subtle phrase 
Cools not the burning of desire ; 
Tears cannot quench that ardent fire ; 
So sweet and low the voices sung. 
So deep and high the singing swung, 
Or, like the bird of heaven, hung 
In joyous swoon, on brooding wing 
Intensely, stilly, hovering. 
Then far away across the vale 
A sapphire sea with ripples pale 
I saw : the golden, further shore 
A group of wan lights wandered o'er 
Hueless and shadowy : and I thought 

171 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

That those the airy music wrought. 
Sudden a great globe brimmed my sight, 
And all my senses took their flight 
To it to make it capable ; 
I was one eye and it was full, 
But can a brazier hold the sun, 
Or any cup the ocean? 

Menzies 

None. 

Basil 
This splendour, now in mist diffused, 
Hung like a cloud of diamond-dust; 
Contracted to a point anon, 
It still so luminously shone 
Its dense light could be seen alone. 
I was one eye, one questioning gaze : 
At once the scintillating haze 

172 



MICHAELMAS 

In answer to my inquisition 
Appeared as two ; and each division 
A shadowy human outline carried, 
Less bright divided than when married. 
Then straight the black gulf hung between 
My aching sight and heaven's scene. 

Brian 
But this is nonsense triple-piled. 

Herbert 
Is nonsense then to be reviled? 

Menzies 

Not so ; for fancy where it lists 
Breathes like the wind : he who resists 
His wanton moods for ever, ends 
In being moodless. 

173 



fleet street eclogues 
Basil 

Good, my friends, 
Forgive, forget. The dream was long, 
Too long. — Let some one sing a song. 

Menzies 
Your bass is rusty, Herbert ; come. 

Herbert 
I '11 sing a song of Harvest-home. 

SONG 

The frost will bite us soon ; 

His tooth is on the leaves : 
Beneath the golden moon 

We bear the golden sheaves : 
We care not for the winter's spite, 
We keep our Harvest-home to-night. 
174 



MICHAELMAS 

Hurrah for the English yeoman ! 

Fill full; fill the cup! 
Hurrah ! he yields to no man ! 

Drink deep ; drink it up ! 

The pleasure of a king 

Is tasteless to the mirth 
Of peasants when they bring 

The harvest of the earth. 
With pipe and tabor hither roam 
All ye who love our Harvest-home. 
Hurrah for the English yeoman ! 

Fill full; fill the cup! 
Hurrah I he yields to no man ! 
Drink deep ; drink it up ! 

The thresher with his flail, 
The shepherd with his crook, 
I7S 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

The milkmaid with her pail, 

The reaper with his hook — 
To-night the dullest-blooded clods 
Are kings and queens, are demigods. 
Hurrah for the English yeoman ! 

Fill full ; fill the cup I 
Hurrah ! he yields to no man ! 
Drink deep ; drink it up ! 



176 



ALL HALLOW'S EVE 



12 



177 



ALL HALLOW'S EVE 

BASIL MENZIES BRIAN PERCY 

Brian 
Tearfully sinks the pallid sun. 

Menzies 
Bring in the lamps : Autumn is done. 

Percy 

Nay, twilight silvers the flashing drops ; 
And a whiter fall is behind. 

Brian 

And the wild east mouths the chimney-tops, 
The Pandean pipes of the wind. 
179 



fleet street eclogues 

Menzies 
The dripping ivy drapes the walls ; 

The drenched red creepers flare ; 
And the draggled chestnut plumage falls 

In every park and square. 

Percy 

Nay, golden garlands strew the way 
For the old triumph of decay. 

Basil 
And I know, in a living land of spells — 

In an excellent land of rest, 
Where a crimson fount of sunset wells 

Out of the darkling west — 

That the poplar, the willow, the scented 
lime, 
Full-leaved in the shining air 
i8o 



ALL HALLOWS EVE 

Tarry as if the enchanter time 
Had fixed them deathless there. 

In arbours and noble palaces 

A gallant people live 
With every manner of happiness 

The amplest life can give. 

Percy 
Where? where? In Elfland? 

Menzies 

No ; oh no ! 
In Elfland is no rest, 
But rumour and stir and endless woe 

Of the unfulfilled behest — 
The doleful yoke of the Elfin folk 
Since first the sun went west. 
i8i 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

The cates they eat and the wine they drink, 

Savourless nothings are ; 
The hopes they cherish, the thoughts they 
think 

Are neither near nor far ; 
And well they know they cannot go 

Even to a desert star : 

One planet is all their poor estate, 
Though a million systems roll ; 

They are dogged and worried, early and late. 
As the demons nag a soul, 

By the moon and the sun, for they never 
can shun 
Time's tyrannous control. 

The haughty delicate style they keep 
Only the blind can see ; 
182 



ALL HALLOW'S EVE 

On holynights in the forest deep, 
When they make high revelry 

Under the moon, the dancing tune 
Is the wind in a cypress tree. 

They burn the elfin midnight oil 

Over their tedious lore ; 
They spin the sand ; and still they toil 

Though their inmost hearts are sore - 
The doleful yoke of the restless folk 

For ever and evermore. 

But could you capture the elfin queen 
Who once was Caesar's prize, 

Daunt and gy^Q her with glances keen 
Of unimpassioned eyes. 

And hear unstirred her magic word. 
And scorn her tears and sighs, 

183 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Lean would she seem at once, and old ; 

Her rosy mouth decayed ; 
Her heavy tresses of living gold, 

All withered in the braid ; 
In your very sight the dew and the light 

Of her eyes would parch and fade ; 

And she, the immortal phantom dame. 
Would vanish from your ken ; 

For the fate of the elves is nearly the same 
As the terrible fate of men : 

To love ; to rue ; to be and pursue 
A flickering wisp of the fen. 

We must play the game with a careless smile, 
Though there 's nothing in the hand ; 

We must toil as if it were worth our while 
Spinning our ropes of sand ; 
184 



ALL HALLOWS EVE 

And laugh and cry, and live and die 
At the waft of an unseen wand. 

But the elves, besides the endless woe 

Of the unfulfilled behest, 
Have only a phanton life, and so 

They neither can die nor rest — 
Have no real being at all, and know 

That therefore they never can rest — 
The doleful yoke of the deathless folk 

Since first the sun went west 

Percy 
Then where is the wonderful land of spells. 
Where a crimson fount of sunset wells, 
And the poplar, the willow, the scented lime 
Tarry, full-leaved, till the winter-time, 
Where endless happiness life can give, 
And only heroic people live? 

1 8s 



fleet street eclogues 

Basil 

We know, we know, we spinners of sand ! 
In the heart of the world is that gracious 

land ; 
And it never can fade while the sap returns, 
While the sun gives light, and the red blood 

burns. 



i86 



QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY 



187 



QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY 

BASIL SANDY MENZIES 

Basil 

A NOBLE fog ! Though I 
Were comfortably dead, 
Shrouded and buried deep 
In my last bed, 
Tucked in for my long sleep, 
Where generations lie, 
I scarce were more at ease 
Than now I feel beneath 
This heavy-laden silent atmosphere. 
189 



fleet street eclogues 

Menzies 
A kraken of the skies ! Its teeth 
Are closing in my throat ; 
A Hthe arm rummages 
Each aching lung. 

Sandy 
We dote 
On your disaster, Menzies. Here, 
Like people of Pompeii, 
Or like Saharan denizens. 
Sitting for centuries 
O'erwhelmed with sand or lava, we 
Are quite at home in fogs like these. 

Basil 
And feel as if our tongues and pens 
Had wagged and scrawled since Arthur's 
time; 

190 



QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY 

And we had seen the best and worst 

Of England's youth and England's prime ; 

As if this day might be the first 

Day of Elizabeth — 

Or any day : the dead, like God, 

Breathing eternal breatti, 

Can be in any period. 

Menzies 

Alas, I cannot but remember 
That this is London in November ! 

Basil 

Be out of London; off! 
Command your soul ; away 
Where woods their wardrobes doff 
To give the wind free play. 
Brocaded oak-trees wait, 

191 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Reluctant to undress ; 

But the woods accept from Fate 

Their lusty nakedness, 

And with a many-armed caress 

Welcome their stormy mate. 

Sandy 

Or where on rivers blacken 
Close fleets of hurrying leaves. 

Basil 

Or where with tawny bracken 
A lonely moorland heaves. 

Sandy 

Where ribbed and spiny hedges 
Hold fast the empty ear. 
192 



queen elizabeth's day 

Basil 

Or where like summer's pledges 
The ruddy hips appear. 

Sandy 
Where coal-black brambles shimmer. 

Basil 

Where in the naked copse, 
Gems in a charnel, glimmer 
The nightshade's coral drops. 

Sandy 

Or where in twilight shaws 
The dusky-glowing thorn 
Hides in its hoard of haws 
The crimson of the morn. 
13 193 



fleet street eclogues 

Basil 

Where earth beholds the skies, 
Or heaven looks on the sea, 
Or where great mountains rise. 
Command your soul to be. 

Menzies 

I may not ; all my brains 

Are baked and dried ; my veins 

Shrunk and unflushed. 

Basil 

Drink wine. 

Menzies 

It steads not ; moods like mine 
Must run their courses out ; 
Nothing can put to rout 
My gloom when I have swilled 
194 



QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY 

Life's sadness to the lees; 
Nepenthe may not ease, 
Or nectar, heaven-distilled. 

Sandy 

Basil, tell us, pray. 
Why you called the day 
After the maiden queen? 

Basil 

Three centuries away 
The child of Anne Boleyn 
Came to the English throne 
Upon this very day. 

Menzies 

Ah ! what a splendid age ! 
Then England's hope was high ; 
195 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

The world was half unknown ; 
And heaven and hell were nigh. 
On such a glorious stage 
I could have played a part 
With other souls devout : 
But the world is now a mart, 
And all the earth found out. 
Hesperia is no more ! 
From Himalayan vales 
Our fathers sought its shore, 
And lit on isles and dales 
Of Greece and Arcady ; 
But soon they set their sails 
Sadly across the sea, 
And came to Etna's base ; 
Yet by Sicilian ways 
No dragon-guarded tree 
With golden apples grew. 
196 



QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY 

Undauntedly they passed 
The Tyrrhene waters blue, 
And reached the Iberian strand 
Hesperia at last ! 
Not there the promised land. 
Westward that vision old 
Fled o'er the Atlantic main 
To sink for ever, slain 
By CaHfornian gold. 

Basil 

This is the promised land ; 
God saw that it was good : 
You fail to understand 
That the world is but a mood, 
And time ours to command. 
This is the hour of doom, 
Or this creation's morn 
197 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

Or Calvary's day of gloom : 
We die not ; were not born. 



Menzies 

Ah, you anachronists ! 
You poets ! It is you, 

With mellow purple mists. 

That shade the dreary view 

Of life, a naked precipice 

Overhanging death's deep sea. 

Sandy 

Anachronists ! I rest on this, 
Whoe'er may count it schism : 
Mere by-blows are the world and we. 
And time within eternity 
A sheer anachronism. 
198 



queen elizabeth's day 

Basil 
A bull ! a thundering bull ! 

Menzies 

But not a blundering one ; 
For Chance directs the sun, 
And Faith is Fortune's fool. 
The world was scarcely made 
Ere Chance began its trade 
And changed to frozen poles 
And spaces tropic-bound 
What Fate created good ; 
And soulless or with souls 
Beasts grew each other's food : 
With floods all flesh was drowned ; 
And foul diseases came ; 
Earth issued forth in flame, 
199 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

And swallowed cities up ; 
Peoples and languages, 
Kingdoms and hierarchies, 
With wars and tortures rose : 
Nay, our most bitter cup 
For ever overflows 
With rich and poor alone : 
Chance has always spurned 
Our struggles to atone. 
Lo, in the simplest thing 
The good is overturned. 
Fate set aside with scorn ! 
The air is clear and sweet ; 
But the fog is in the street : 
In June the squares were green. 
What dreary places now ! 
Ere we may greet the spring, 
Must winter come again ; 
200 



QUEEN ELIZABETH* S DAY 

And man may not be born 
Without a woman's pain. 

Basil 
But God has no machine 
For punching perfect worlds from cakes of 
chaos. 

Sandy 
How! 

Basil 
He works but as He can ; 
God is an artist, not an artisan. 
Darkly imagining, 
With ice and fire and storm, 
With floods and earthquake-shocks 
He gave our sphere its form. 
The meaning of His work 
Grew as He wrought. 

201 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

In creases of the mud, in cooling rocks 

He saw ideas lurk — 

Mountains and streams. 

Of life the passionate thought 

Haunted His dreams. 

At last He tried to do 

The thing He dreamt. 

With plasm in throbbing notes, 

With moss and ferns and giant beasts un- 
kempt 

He laboured long, until at length He seemed 

To breathe out being. Flowers and forests 
grew 

Like magic at His word : mountain and 
plain, 

Jungle and sea and waste, 

With miracles of strength and beauty 
teemed : 

202 



QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY 

In every drop and every grain, 

Each speck and stain, 

Was some new being placed, 

Minute or viewless. Then was He aghast, 

And all His passion to create grew tame ; 

For life battened on life. He thought 

To shatter all ; but in a space 

He loved His work again and sought 

To crown It with a sovereign grace ; 

And soon the great idea came : 

* If I could give my work a mind ; 

* If I could make it comprehend 

* How wondrously it is designed ; 

* Enable it with head and heart 

'To mould itself to some accomplished end, 

* That were indeed transcendent art.' 
Trembling with ecstasy He then made man, 
To be the world's atonement and its prince. 

203 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

And in the world God has done nothing 

since : 
He keeps not tinkering at a finished plan ; 
He is an artist, not an artisan. 

Menzies 

I Ve heard it sung, I Ve heard it said, 

I Ve read it oft in many books. 

That truth 's as long as it is broad. 

I like your dilettante God : 

When man His work has perfected. 

Straight God will blot it out again. 

Or change it to a sterile moon, 

Upon whose past shall speculate 

Star-gazers from some brand-new land-and- 

sea. 
And why should mortal man complain 
Although no memory shall be 

204 



QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY 

Of all the millions of his race, 

Who broke brave hearts still fronting Fate ; 

Although no rumour of Helen's looks, 

Although no Caesar's name of note. 

No mellow word that Shakespeare wrote, 

No echo of Wagner's spheral tune. 

Shall sound in any nook of space? 

God is an artist, and all art 

Is useless, other artists say. 

Sandy 
If God is art and art is God, 
I fear I don't believe in God. 

Basil 
That matters not, since this is true — 
Hear me before you go away, 
And turn this over in your heart — 
That God Himself believes in you. 

205 



CHRISTMAS EVE 



207 



CHRISTMAS EVE 

BASIL SANDY BRIAN MENZIES 

Sandy 

In holly hedges starving birds 
Silently mourn the setting year. 

Basil 

Upright like silver-plated swords 
The flags stand in the frozen mere. 

Brian 

The mistletoe we still adore 

Upon the twisted hawthorn grows. 
14 209 



u 



fleet street eclogues 

Menzies 

In antique gardens hellebore 

Puts forth its blushing Christmas rose. 

Sandy 

Shrivelled and purple, cheek by jowl, 
The hips and haws hang drearily. 

Basil 

Rolled in a ball the sulky owl 
Creeps far into his hollow tree. 

Brian 

In abbeys and cathedrals dim 
The birth of Christ is acted o'er ; 

The kings of Cologne worship Him, 
Balthazar, Jasper, Melchior. 

2IO 



christmas eve 

Menzies 
And while our midnight talk is made 

Of this and that and now and then, 
The old earth-stopper with his spade 

And lantern seeks the fox's den. 

Sandy 
Oh, for a northern blast to blow 

These depths of air that cream and curdle ! 

Basil 
Now are the halcyon days, you know ; 
Old Time has leapt another hurdle ; 

And pauses as he only may 

Who knows he never can be caught. 

Brian 

The winter solstice, shortest day 

And longest night, was past, I thought. 

211 



fleet street eclogues 

Basil 
Oh yes ! but fore-and-aft a week 

Silent the winds must ever be, 
Because the happy halcyons seek 

Their nests upon the sea. 

Brian 
The Christmas-time ! the lovely things 
That last of it ! Sweet thoughts and deeds ! 

Sandy 
How strong and green old legend clings 
Like ivy round the ruined creeds ! 

Menzies 
A fearless, ruthless, wanton band, 

Deep in our hearts we guard from scathe, 
Of last year's log, a smouldering brand 

To Hght at Yule the fire of faith. 

212 



CHRISTMAS EVE 



Brian 



The shepherds in the field at night 

Beheld an angel glory-clad, 
And shrank away with sore affright. 

' Be not afraid,' the angel bade. 

* I bring good news to king and clown, 

* To you here crouching on the sward ; 

* For there is born in David's town 

' A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 

* Behold the babe is swathed, and laid 

* Within a manger.' Straight there stood 
Beside the angel all arrayed 

A heavenly multitude. 

' Glory to God,' they sang ; * and peace, 

* Good pleasure among men.' 

213 



fleet street eclogues 

Sandy 
The wondrous message of release, 
That forged another chain ! 

Brian 
Nay, nay ; God help us to be good ! 

Basil 
Hush ! hark ! Without ; the waits, the 
waits ! 
With brass and strings, and mellow wood. 

Menzies 
A simple tune can ope heaven's gates ! 

Sandy 
Slowly they play, poor careful souls. 

With wistful thoughts of Christmas cheer, 
Unwitting how their music rolls 
Away the burden of the year. 
214 



christmas eve 

Basil 
And with the charm, the homely rune, 

To early moods our minds incline, 
As when our pulses beat in tune 

With all the stars that shine. 

Menzies 
Oh, cease ! oh, cease ! 

Basil 

Ay, cease ; and bring 
The wassail-bowl, the cup of grace. 

Sandy 
Pour wine, and heat it till it sing. 

With cloves and cardamoms and mace. 

Basil 
And frothed and sweetened round it goes. 
The while we drink the whole world's 
health. 

215 



fleet street eclogues 

Sandy 

The whole world's health ! But chiefly 

those 

Who grasp the whole world's power and 

wealth. 

Brian 

I drink the poor in spirit; theirs 

Is heaven's kingdom. 

Sandy 

Theirs, below, 
A bursting granary of tares. 
Derision, contumely, woe. 

Brian 

To those who patiently have borne 

Sorrow ! 

Sandy 

May joy come soon instead ! 

216 



CHRISTMAS EVE 

I drink the health of those that mourn 
And never can be comforted. 

Brian 
I drink the meek. 

Sandy 

I drink their foes, 
The ruthless heirs of all the earth — 
The knaves, the pushing men, and those 
Who claim prerogatives of birth. 

Brian 
I drink the merciful, for they 
Shall mercy gain. 

Sandy 

From usurers? 

Brian 
The pure in heart, and those who pray 
And work for peace when faction stirs, 
217 



FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 

I drink ; and all whom men condemn 

For righteousness, who never shrink 
From persecution. 

Sandy 

Yes, to them ! 
To every sinner too, I drink ! 

Basil 
Hush ! hark ! the waits, far up the street ! 

Menzies 

A new, unearthly charm unfolds 
Of magic music wild and sweet, 
Anomes and clarigolds ! 

THE END 



2l8 



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